Trade sanctions may one day be seen as the opening shots of WWIII. Economic sanctions have become the first attack of choice in bending or weakening non-compliant adversaries to the modern western globalist view. The US encouraged the Ukrainian maiden revolution after their President turned towards Russia over the EU. The US and its western allies started imposing financial and trade sanctions on Russia. These sanctions were advantageous to the US who had little trade with Russia while financially hurting many countries within the EU. They continued ratcheting up the sanctions against Russia who in turn created counter sanctions and refused to yield to the pressure from the west. Now the US has put China in its sights and has started sanctioning their companies using North Korea and Iran as the excuse. The US in trying to maintain its global hegemony is going after countries that currently or will in the future challenge its ability to project power globally.
China is rapidly growing its military and will have the ability soon to impose financial sanctions and penalties against its adversaries a feat that has been limited to the US and its allies. China realizes as the west does that if they can gain the ability to control trade through its surrounding seas it can unseat the United States political and economic power. The US and Europe like Japan was at the beginning of WW2, is very dependent on imports and fear having its trade controlled by adversaries. When these hegemonic views are challenged the US has two options economic warfare and/or military war.
Almost all modern wars involving the US since WW1 have evolved from economic actions. The US was drawn into WW2 after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. This was precipitated from the US starting trade sanctions against Japan in July 1940 on oil and steel. Then in July 1941 the US started a full oil and economic embargo on Japan who at the time was at war with China and dependent on 80% of its imports from the west.
President Donald Trump on the 31st of March 2017 signed two Presidential Executive Orders, “Establishing Enhanced Collection and Enforcement of Antidumping and Countervailing Duties and Violations of Trade and Customs Laws” and “Regarding the Omnibus Report on Significant Trade Deficits.”Trade and economic warfare almost always preceded actual war. President Trump will host President Xi of China at Mar-a-Lago on April 6th and 7th where he is to address trade and North Korea.
China realizes the power that it could soon yield against other nations. The west’s ability to prevent this power exchange is closing. The military might of China in four years will be sufficient to control their surrounding seas almost unchallenged. Any nation that would challenge this control would have to be willing to sacrifice significant military losses while China embargoed trade through the surrounding seas causing massive economic chaos to their country. China is starting to project its growing military and economic power by setting up bases in other countries like their new naval base in Djibouti Africa. China’s Chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee Zhang Dejiang stated this past week, “China is ready to work with Cuba to advance military ties so as to further enrich bilateral relations.” According to Reuters, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian, told a monthly news briefing on March 30th in reference to the US supplying new weapons that “Separatist Taiwan independence forces and their activities are the greatest threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait…It is futile to use weapons to refuse unification and is doomed to have no way out.”
The US Department of National Intelligence Global Trends report states, “The next five years will see rising tensions within and between countries. Global growth will slow, just as increasingly complex global challenges impend. An ever-widening range of states, organizations, and empowered individuals will shape geopolitics. For better and worse, the emerging global landscape is drawing to a close an era of American dominance following the Cold War. So, too, perhaps is the rules-based international order that emerged after World War II. It will be much harder to cooperate internationally and govern in ways publics expect. Veto players will threaten to block collaboration at every turn, while information “echo chambers” will reinforce countless competing realities, undermining shared understandings of world events.”
According to the Department of Defense commissioned independent assessment of U.S. military strategy and force posture in the Asia-Pacific, by the Center for Strategic & International Studies report Asia-Pacific Rebalance 2025, “The course charted by China’s reemergence as a great power over the next few decades represent the primary strategic challenge for the United States and for the Asian security landscape writ large. If China’s economic, military, and geopolitical influence continues to rise at even a modest pace during this period, the world will witness the largest shift in the global distribution of power since the rise of the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”
Please review the links within the article to draw your own conclusion and opinions.
Soldiers of an honor guard, and members of the 179th Infantry, People’s Liberation Army, give a welcome salute to Chief Master Sgt. James A. Roy, U.S. Pacific Command senior enlisted leader, at their base in Nanjing, China, June 18.
Members of the first all-enlisted delegation toured the facility to gain a better understanding of the People’s Liberation Army’s enlisted forces and military.